A Week in Scraps
by kafkabythesea
Summary: He was like space: built of nothing but cosmic stardust and non-luminous moonlight, all void and desolate but so breathtaking and heart-wrenching at the same time. Illumi/OC


Thoughts are so heavy, Illumi thinks, or rather feels. Feeling and _feeling_ are different things to him – he does not _feel_ love and does not _feel _hate. But thoughts are heavy. His mind is approximately size eleven, black Times New Roman with a mix of compound complex and simple sentences. The brain then sends electrical neuron messages to his mouth and his words come out the same way: size eleven, black Times New Roman.

But thoughts are private. Words are not private. Anyone could listen to his words and learn all kinds of problems they should not know. But thoughts are private. He has yet to encountered another person who could hear his thoughts. Thoughts are illegal and thoughts are his.

Therefore, thoughts are heavy.

However Illumi Zoldyck's thoughts are not important. His thoughts are his family's thoughts. His words are his family's words. On good days, there were no difference between Illumi's thoughts and words, and the Zoldyck's thoughts and words. But on especially bad days, on days like today, Illumi Zoldyck was just Illumi. He did not deserve the Zoldyck name, not when he was bleeding out here, rain in his hair and blood on his hands. So on days like today, Illumi was Just Illumi_._

Therefore, thoughts were heavy.

For a brief moment, while he was lying on the cold, hard ground, he allowed the stars to sketch down invisible constellations, retelling the first cell that split into two, the birth of fire and heart, a man's first act of stealing blood and life, and the conscious mind _listening._ So when Just Illumi landed _smack_ down to Earth, his mind was the top of Mount Kilimanjaro, with it's melting glaciers and the dark lava rocks. White light curled around his body, his hair itched at his neck and something _not his_ rustled when he turned his head. Illumi's eyes fell flat open – a window to the soul, but not really _to the soul_, since thoughts are heavy. Dark nothing pooled down from his chest – ah – he had a wound. White bandages weaved around his pale chest, and there was a large, ugly bruise beginning to form under his ribcage. Mismatched internal bleeding on blank white canvas.

Illumi stood up. He did not feel the chill of the ash grey floorboards under his bare feet, although he did hear something mechanical humming within this building. The window by the bed was also open. Humid breeze carried through with the promise of rain. Still Yukan – still Yukan city with its bleary city lights and _heady, wet air_ all year round.

So Illumi began to think. He began to wonder where he was, and he had time for it. The target was dead. The target was dead, even if Illumi nearly died in the process.

But that came later.

He tilted his head back and blank, dark eyes fell on a crumpled note, written on the back of a grocery receipt.

_Hey I hope you didn__'__t mind me changing your clothes, I found you at the back of our neighbourhood, you know, in the alley with all the graffiti. You were kind of bleeding everywhere, and please don__'__t move around too much, you may have punctured your lung. I__'__d recommend you going to the hospital, because I__'__m really not certified, but probably not the 'hospital__'__, since '__murder__' __and all. There__'__s some food on the kitchen table, and I__'__ll be back in the afternoon, if you__'__re staying, that is (I__'__d recommend staying). If you are, then there are books on the table next to your bed, if you like __reading that is__._

_-Sakamae_

_(PS. Please don__'__t stick fingers into the fish tank. He__'__s carnivorous.) _

Illumi glanced at the dusty pile of books. _Monologues of a Homeless Snail; Seen and Unseen; Thus Spoke Zarathus – _obscure avant-garde classics. He personally preferred ones he could apply to real life.

But thoughts were heavy. Thoughts were destructive. He pushed his En out after a brisk moment's hesitation, and after finding no one in the vicinity with not-laughable powers, Illumi – Just Illumi, picked the first one off the pile and retreated back to the lukewarm bed, with pure white sheets and wild, sprawling, potted plants by the bedside table. He began to read. And thoughts became invisible after a while.

When that period of the day passed, where the sky mingled from warm to cool, sunlight to starlight, and clouds to nothing, she came back. Her footsteps were obnoxiously loud when the front door slammed open. Plastic bags rustled and when Illumi listened, the light switched on and water sloshed somewhere near the entrance. Her footsteps slowed and gentle _lovelove_ murmurs rose.

Something vicious lashed at him and Antarctic ice hit his back.

Illumi tensed.

_Ah. _

He tilted his head.

There was something just like him here.

Ample curiosity began to gnaw at him and within a matter of seconds, Illumi was standing in the doorway of the living room.

The female almost dropped her bags. "Ah-" She blinked rapidly. "You stayed." Her mouth drooped into a slight smile, "That's good, you stayed. I'm, um, just about to feed Gyokudo." She pointed to the massive glass tank against the white wall. Natural light filtered from the ceiling high window and into the water, casting the bubbles from the air pump champagne gold. Something _fierce and serpentine_ rolled within the confines of the glass. An aquatic fern with long, green leaves rose from the bottom of the tank to the surface in one corner and the sand swirled as the fish turned around.

It stared at him.

Illumi stared back.

She didn't seem to mind his lack of response and simply continued to scoop flailing feeder fish from a much smaller tank.

"He's a Giant Snakehead," Sakamae said, walking over to the front of the tank and using a catching net to take fish out. "His name is Gyokudo and he turned five this year." She explained as if the fish was a dog or a cat.

Illumi blankly watched the dark patterns on its alabaster skin ripple as it twisted slowly to the surface. Sakamae tipped the net. It was over in an instant.

He paused.

Cold intention crashed onto him in _waves_. It was only a delayed feeling that came several moments after the feeder fish disappeared, and if he was an ordinary man, there was no seeing the snakehead eat it. But Illumi was not an ordinary man.

The Giant Snakehead paralysed the fish with _Nen_ before striking.

He had never encountered this kind of species before. Illumi originally thought there was something very _wrong_ with the gaze of those spacey black eyes. Quite a confronting stare it had. This creature was smarter than the usual animal that belonged in a glass tank, and it also _understood_. The people outside the glass were the same as the one inside the glass, regardless of the border between inside and outside, and they both had the same functions: bleeding, wounding, breathing, eating, drinking, living and _dying_. Illumi appeared to be within a glass tank from the snakehead's eyes, and the snakehead appeared to be within a glass tank from Illumi's eyes.

He glanced at her to see if she noticed, but Sakamae did not even react. Her blunt bangs cut across her face and her mouth was perpetually set in a slight smile. But at that moment, when she turned around after the snakehead decided he had eaten enough, with her disheveled hair drifting from side to side, Illumi realised why she did not react.

They had the same eyes.

She looked up at him with those translucent blue eyes, something akin to that of a particularly foggy sky in a mountainous forest, with pine trees jutting upward – all overcast and rainy. Words cut off his thoughts.

"I found you in an alley, by the way. You had some _really_ bad knife wounds." Illumi didn't bother to explain to her they weren't knife wounds, but rather card wounds. _Playing_ _card_ wounds. "The one on your chest nearly punctured your lung, and I wouldn't move around too much considering how deep it is, as it could tear further."

Illumi was well aware.

"Can I ask how you received them?" His cold eyes shot to her face, but only simple curiosity reflected back. "The wounds I mean?"

"I was attacked." He answered plainly. Yes that was an acceptable answer. "How did you find me?" If he left a trail, then that could be difficult. The Zoldycks never left evidence, and to leave a trail _after such a simple job_ would be shameful.

Ah, but that's right. He was still Just Illumi.

"Eh-" Sakamae opened her mouth and inhaled sharply. "How I found you? Well it's difficult to explain, but I was just walking back from my university and I guess I just felt this _really bad_ aura – If you call it aura? I don't really know, to be honest, and this probably sounds totally _strange_," She laughed awkwardly, walking backwards and plopping down onto the sofa, "But I've always been able to feel these kinds of things." Her eyes flashed towards him and Illumi stared back. "Weird, right? For example," She propped up an arm and rested her chin on her hand, "I can tell you've killed a lot of people by those _god awful things_ screaming behind you…" Sakamae trailed off, staring at the space above his head.

"And it doesn't bother you." Illumi stated, sounding as flat and empty as always.

Her eyebrows quirked up. "Yes. Yes I guess it doesn't. It's never bothered me. Well, maybe I'm used to it," Her toes curled up in the woolly rug beneath the black coffee table, "Maybe I'm used to seeing other people's demons."

_Other people's demons._ That was a different way of saying '_other people's_ _acts of inhumanity'._

"Ah?" Illumi tilted his head, snapping his impassiveness in half for the first time since he arrived in this apartment. "That's _interesting_." His long hair slipped off his shoulders and dangled down his side.

"Isn't it," Sakamae sighed, eyes resting on Gyokudo's prowling movements across the room. "It put me into a lot of trouble when I was younger."

Illumi did not respond. He walked to the front of the snakehead's tank and not a single sound was made. The animal sprung up to the surface in one wild motion, alive and stormy_. _Water flicked past him and Sakamae blinked, sitting up. She relaxed when Illumi leaned back and Gyokudo drifted back down to the bottom of the tank.

It would be easy for both of them to vanish, Illumi decided, this college student and her untamed fish.

"There's another thing," Sakamae turned her head to the side, "I can take it away as well."

He stopped.

Turned around.

"I can take it away." She repeated.

"Oh? Can you?" He repeated.

Sakamae didn't respond. Her hand was covering her eyes and it took Illumi a few moments to understand she was crying.

_Crying._

"Can I please have your hand?" She whispered. "I just, I _kind_ of need it to take it away."

Illumi did not particularly care whether or not he had invisible dead people screaming after him, but he was, however, _very fascinated by the promise of being able to take sins away. _If it was possible, then, well, he's never seen it before.

Illumi held his hand out.

Sakamae closed her eyes with a smile and took it, removing the hand that covered her rainy eyes and placed it on top of his. His fingers were spider thin and rough, as though the millions of constellations that made him up were very real and alive. Illumi realised after some time that her tears coating his hand were not hot and painful like Killua's the first time his one hundred and fifty of his two hundred and six bones were broken for training. Her tears were cold and he felt nothing. But at the same time, his heartbeat stopped for the smallest amount of time. It was long enough for Illumi to apprehend his heartbeat stopped and is now offbeat, but not nearly long enough for Illumi to remember _why _or the reason why he even had a heartbeat to begin with.

Then translucent fog vapours _poured over her_ and all of a sudden _Illumi understood what she was_. _Oh_ slipped out and he twisted his mouth into a crude thing that barely resembled a smile. _She was an exorcist formidable enough to remove the lingering remains of dead men's Nen._ Her power dimly reminded Illumi of an artist he was assigned to kill, whose paintings were so vivid and sentimental, they spurred one critic to commit suicide and another to devote his life to this him. That target also used Nen within his paintings unconsciously, almost like it was but a pure and simple _gift_.

His thoughts were shaken off by the feeling of the dead stare of the snakehead behind him. Illumi vaguely considered shooting a needle through the glass and right down the middle of the fish's head, but the restraining feeling of her hand cradling his made him pause momentarily.

Her eyes fluttered open, still misty with droplets gathering along her dark eyelashes. "Thank you." Sakamae looked at him with big, honest blue eyes. "Would you like some tea?"

When he did not respond, she took it as a yes, and walked towards the archway of the kitchen. Requiem in B flat major by Dvorak started to drift statically from a radio somewhere. Illumi stared at the place she was sitting previously, eyes blank and dark as ever.

* * *

><p>AN:

I work better on criticism. (◕‿◕)


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